(H+NH)2 = H2+2HNH+NH2 (part 2)

This is again the time of comings and goings. One more time, the end of holidays goes hand in hand with its usual crowded railway stations and traffic jams. The management of vehicles flows raises particular issues for tolls on highways. For quiet some time now, several options are made available to motorists. There are two different kinds of exit booths: some with people, others with automatic ticket machines that digest credit cards. The former are generally considered less profitable. The cost of staff is no longer justified in the era of intelligent machines that only require routine maintenance. The substitution of machines for people is also a question of speed. Beyond the monetary transaction, the discussion with a machine designed for a single task remains very limited.
Managing the flow of vehicles is even more radical at the entrance of the highways, where only machines are involved in the distribution of tickets. But the phenomena of delegation of action to non-humans, as standardized as they are, remain open. Their irreversibility is never complete. That’s what we have experienced in taking our highway ticket. As we were reaching the distributor line, what a surprise: before the automatic machine emited the noise of the ticket printing, the arm of a human emerged to give me a ticket. That day, to accelerate the pace and avoid the making of a traffic jam, the choice was made to reintroduce a human dealer, hidden behind her automatic counterpart. Was it to overcome a possible failure? Was it to anticipate a lack of ink due to the large number of printings? Whatever it was, we were as much amazed by the role-play of the human dealer as by her presence. Neither a word, nor a facial expression. Only one arm to deliver the ticket.